A BBC reporter was interviewing one persistent, but as yet unsuccessful, immigrant on the recent death of his friend. “How are you feeling?” she asked. They were in the man’s tent, “in the Jungle” the Calais camp site, where he and his friend had been living for the last month.

“Oh it must be so sad for you to still see his shoe on the floor over there…” said the reporter, interviewing the man who cousin died last week in the tunnel between Calais and Dover. It reminded me of the spoof news TV show, Drop the Dead Donkey, some years ago on Channel 4, where our reporter on the scene of the latest disaster pointed tearfully to a child’s toy in the rubble. That same teddy bear had been seen in Beirut, Gaza, Turkish earthquake sites and all over the world; it travelled in our reporter’s rucksack until he was rumbled.

Unbelievably for me at least, this is the pathetic level to which BBC radio news has fallen. I had already stopped watching the sensationalist, sentimental twaddle that BBC TV news become several years ago, but am saddened to see the disease spreading to the radio.

Welcome to Europe

I was fuming at the dumbed down, gutter level sentimentality shown by the reporter and the complete naivety of the man trying to get to Britain for ‘safety’ reasons.This story was not the story I was interested in. I wanted to hear, in the immigrants own words, why they thought Britain was the preferred destination over France or Italy. Of course, I think I already know the answer, but I wanted to hear it from them. But, oh no, we just got emotional drivel prompted by drivel questioning. I further wanted to hear, from the immigrant, what was so awful in their own country; and again, I think I know the answer BUT I wanted to hear it from the potential immigrant himself.

Another Pakistani, interviewed, who said he was 12 when he made the journey to Britain a few years ago was urged by his mother to undertake the perilous journey, said that ” … after all, it was the British who caused all these problems from which we flee, so the British should be proud to accept these people who so need our help.”

He has a point, but a very small one compared to the brutality of those who rule, or fail to rule, the countries from which these immigrants flee. Compared say, to the primitive ignorance of the Taliban, al–Qaeda, ISIS et all, all of whose political ideas of nationhood are based of the teachings of the Qur’an.

Here is my alternative take on this whole situation.

What a jolly good idea! Lets put the EU leaders in a boat and send them to Libya …

Whilst I am saddened by the plight of those who wish to escape war torn parts of the Middle East and Africa, I thought a little historical, world view light, might put the whole thing into perspective.

No one was there to help us when when in our more primitive times, we ran around the country killing each other smothered with woad whilst praying to Earth Mother and talking with fairies. There were no better run, safer countries to run to. So, over the next two thousand years or so, we grew up a bit, killed a load more of our young men, women and children, reduced the number of our gods to the last one still standing. Then, more recently still, quite a few of us are working on losing even that last one who is slowly disappearing day by day!

Perhaps, we should try harder to limit immigration to these Islands to a more realistic level? The last 20 years have been mismanaged by our under age career politicians to such an extent that the EU, and Britain in particular, have become a preferred, if dangerous, option for the world’s refugees.

Our Dave wants to defeat the poison of radical Islam, jolly good eh? Well, no, he still defends state funded faith schools. His use of the word poison, copies Blair, his hero, who has used the word poison in the same context many times since 2010. Yet, despite agreeing on the word, neither Blair nor Cameraman have the slightest clue about the nature of so-called radical Islam.

Cameraman’s Birmingham speech on the 21st July was welcome, but several years too late. He announced some short-term measures, but he dared not face, what needs to be done to address the problem.

He missed the reason that so many British educated, intelligent, Muslim young men and women have become radicalised.

I argue that the word radicalised misses the point entirely, and has led Dave, and many others, down the wrong path in search of a solution. He has not yet understood why so many young Muslims are ready to fight in Syria for Islamic State. He has not yet understood how their mind-set was so warped away from that of their parents, most of whom are as clueless as is our Dave.

He said, in his speech, “They start with intolerant views towards democracy, freedom of expression and sexual equality. If this is not challenged they often gravitate to even more extreme views.”

Radical preacher Anjem Choudary has claimed that all Muslim MPs and voters are ‘apostates’. This evil deluded monster walks the streets of Britain subsidised by our welfare system.

But, he did not, or dare not, explain that the source of that very intolerance is the Qur’an itself. The Qur’an is aided and abetted by Hadith(s) (supplementary instructions issued long after the original manual). Democracy is an alien concept to Islam. Muslims must instead submit to the will of Allah, as directed by the Qur’an and follow Sharia, Islamic law. Sharia only applies to Muslims, so it should follow that it can only be implemented in an Islamic state.

Indeed, it is arguable that Sharia is not actually Islamic in the first place. The word is mentioned in the Qur’an, three times, but in a completely different context. Sharia, or Islamic law, is based on older Jewish law and was written some 200 years later than the Qur’an itself. Anyway, I could be paddling up an intellectual creek here because so many Islamic scholars disagree with each other on this point, and who am I to offer help? 😉

(Ed: Ooh stop, it hurts!)

Britain however, is subject to the Rule of Law. One legal system to which all citizens, of whatever religion (or none), are accountable. Aristotle said this more than two thousand years ago, “The rule of law is better than that of any individual.”

Our politicians have pandered to Muslim sensitivities. They have mistakenly allowed Sharia courts to rule on “family matters” for example. This thin end of the wedge stupidity, has all but destroyed the last 1,000 years of western philosophical and legal development. Cultural differences have been allowed to fester into the divisions we see today. For example, the political corruption exposed in Tower Hamlets last month and postal voting corruption in Birmingham, Bradford etc.

ISIS (AKA ISIL or Da’ish) are just implementing the bits of the Qur’an that moderate Muslims had started to ignore. Just read a little of the Qur’an and you will soon see what I mean.

So then, you may ask, just how do we stop young minds becoming so warped?

All religions rely on child minds being in awe of something that is apparently bigger and more powerful than them. Better still if this power is invisible, how can you challenge that eh? Once this awe is instilled in a child’s mind, it becomes very difficult to remove in later life. This innate awe is enthusiastically used by those who radicalise disaffected young minds and by all religions, eager for new followers.

Dickens was quite correct then, but times have changed, even he could not see the rise of Mohammedanism (as it was then called)

Roman Catholics in Northern Ireland have found it almost impossible to accept that their Popes have silently covered up the sexual deviance of their priesthood for centuries. Only now when the evidence is overwhelming, have many Catholics found the strength to see the inherent evils in Roman Catholicism. Many still cannot accept the truth, and remain in awe of the Vatican’s clever use of art, music and pomp to hide its innate delusions. Charles Dickens clearly saw what Catholicism was, even if he was somewhat open to criticism in his own personal life.

Faith schools are therefore the source of the problem. The very idea of faith being taught as a valid and laudable path for young human minds to follow is warped. This thinking was exposed, by European Enlightenment philosophers, in the 17th & 18th centuries. They called for reason to replace faith. Notable amongst those thinkers was John Locke who advocated that religion must occupy the private sphere of life in order for the many different faiths to co-exist peacefully.

There are many contributing factors to radicalisation of course;

US / UK foreign policy in Iraq;

the Qur’an, seen by Muslims as the unalterable word of god;

Muslims must live under Sharia, Islamic law

Saudi funding for Madrassas in the UK;

misguided support for primitive cultural practices by politicians hungry for votes, in the name multiculturalism;

government’s fear of violent reprisals from minority communities;

Those are the starting points for the radicalisation process of those already affected by the awe of the faith virus. The rest follows on quite logically from that!

Yes, our democracy is flawed, but all other methods of political control are considerably worse (echoing the words of Winston Churchill). Humans will probably get there eventually, but not while religious groups all compete for separate privileges in the public sphere. One law, applicable to all please!

Free bus passes for Faith schools? Primitive halal and kosher practices being allowed to bypass the law because of religious exemption? Time off to pray? Bah, Poo & Piffle says I.

Come on Dave, get moving!

Meanwhile, more and more faith schools are created each year (200 more planned currently) to preach their message of otherness, difference and division thereby sowing the seeds of societal destruction that today’s young disaffected Muslims’ parents came here to escape. The irony is that the Birmingham schools at the centre of the Trojan horse scandal were not faith schools, but the exposure of their failings raised major questions marks about how faith schools operate. What is alarming is that if the Birmingham schools had been designated faith schools, then many of the practices condemned, such as limiting the curriculum to exclude lessons about sex education and reinforcing a cultural identity to the exclusion of others, would have been permitted!

I would have this next paragraph used in schools to promote discussion:

There is a reason that some 93% of the planet’s top scientist reject the notion of a personal god. The real mystery is why the other 7% don’t. After all, science is based on evidence and there is no evidence that god exists. None. What we may feel in our hearts is not evidence and neither is the bible since the argument is circular. (The bible is true because it says it is. The Qur’an is true because that is what Qur’an says.)

Simply asking faith schools nicely to be more inclusive will not work. A secular (free from religious dogma) education, for all children, is the only way to heal the divisions caused by faith schools.

Whilst even that will take several generations to work, I submit that there is no other way for human societies to develop in peace.

Vote hungry, party politicians are going to remove religion from schools? Let us hope so!

At London Conference of 1953, the Greek Minister of Finance signed a treaty agreeing to cancel 50% of Germany’s debt! How times change!

While the idiotic posturing of Jean-Claude Juncker (a banker friendly supporter of globalisation and an expert in tax avoidance for multi-nationals) waits for Greece to agree to ridiculous demands to pay back the banks who were daft enough to loan a third world economy buckets of cash in the first place, Greece’s Prime Minister (and most of the Greek people) still want to retain the Euro.

Juncker talking out of the rear end of a German elephant

Both sides in the debate, which is scheduled to end this Sunday (but don’t hold your breath) are publicly refusing to accept the inevitable, which is this:

Greece’s debt (almost twice its GDP) has to be reduced by at least 50% and the banksters will have to take their haircut. The longer the banks refuse their haircut, the worse the financial crash will be

Greece needs to cut the public sector back to 15% of the working population rather than the 40% it is today (similar to Northern Ireland…)

Greece must return the retirement age to 65 ish rather than the current ridiculous 61.9

Greek cash based tax avoidance culture is just too different from that of Northern Europe, and the EU’s incompetence in allowing Greece, Italy and Portugal to join is a cock-up which will inevitably lead to the Euro’s demise

Those are the simple economic realities which both sides are cannot face.

Yanis Varoufakis, the Greek finance minister sacked a few days ago (to appease EU bankers) was the only person qualified enough in economics to be worth listening to.

Yanis Varoufakis talking about the EU, so, he had to go! Hehe!

His blog makes perfect sense in debunking the ridiculous Euro and the undemocratic nonsense that is the EU.

The stark realities are that 20% of the population of Greece are below the EU poverty line and levels of unemployment average out at 55%.

Behind all this posturing is, of course, the basic nonsense that is the Euro. William Hague wrote an excellent article in yesterday’s Daily Telegraph which explains what I have been saying here since 2006, i.e. that the Euro is potty, well worth a read ! Pity he didn’t have the balls to say it loud and clear when he had the power to do something about it.

… so says the disgraced Jeremy Clarkson in yesterday’s Sun newspaper (or so I am reliably informed by the Today Program 😉 ). The fact that Clarkson was quite right of course, was missed by the party political elite, all the pollsters, and the journalist clever dicks whose very living depends on producing acres of crap 24/7.

Ok – this is your chance before it goes on eBay …Who will give me £50?

The simple reason for them all being wrong is that they could not bear to listen to the still small voice in their own heads that echoed Clarkson’s unmentionable thoughts.

Milliband, as leader and Prime Minister, was never, ever going to happen. He was a number two made into a number one by an outdated party political funding system.

The Liberal Democraps ignored the fact that nobody will vote for a liar as PM. The Lib Dems electoral failure was a tragedy for me personally because I am a natural liberal and hold most of the Lib Dems policies close to my heart, with one major exception. Their support for the nonsensical EU, is a complete mystery to me.

So then, Dave Cameraman just got lucky.

His two main opponents were dead in the water and that, together with the unfair electoral boundaries plus the First past the post system, destroyed the chances of UKIP and the Greens getting their fair share of MPs. Nicola Sturgeon’s surge dug the hole deeper for Milliband, and Clegg’s stubborn resistance to losing power was the icing on the cake.

The case for Proportional Representation has never been stronger.

Some form of PR is required for a truly representatiove democracy.

Perhaps then more than only 66% of the electorate might feel like voting!

Theresa May today underlined why so few of us will be voting for one of the main parties on May 17th. She played the usual game of not answering any question put to her, avoiding any semblance of honesty and straight speaking that we, the people, so desire. The same criticism applies to Millibean and Clegg too, so I am not being partisan!

The original Right to Buy policy, brought in by that dreadful 1980s Thatcher government, is to be renewed by a Tory government. If, that is, enough voters are persuaded to give them the 326 seats required for an overall majority. It was hailed as enabling council house tenants to buy their homes at way under market price. Many were then immediately sold on and profits realised on the backs of public funded but Tory policy.

I Want to buy one of those please – its my RIGHT!

The Right to buy policy was morally wrong and flawed in the 1980s, and it still is.

Here’s why:-

There is no such thing as a right to buy a house, or anything else for that matter. You can either afford to buy something or not!

The policy message iteself is based on the manipulation of simple greed. Rights are earned and cannot be given by some political party!

The Right to buy policy fueled house price inflation like nowhere else on this planet.

It created the fake debt led economic boom that savers and the poor started paying for in 2008. Our grand children will still be paying for it in 2060!

Council housing was brought in by an enlightened Labour government under Clement Atlee, just after the end of World War II. It was to be ‘a privilege’ for those who moved to the new, small and human sized, estates and was designed for “hard working families”. Most of those new Council estates had schools and appropriate infrastructure planned in, so all was good. I know, I was raised in one, a good one, in Letchworth garden city.

The idea, then, was that you had to meet certain criteria to live in a new council house. Only ‘hard working families’ with one or two working members could apply.

Back in the 1950s, there was little private debt to accompany the massive public debt. Credit cards and hire purchase agreements were yet to be invented by the Tories and the banksters. People saved for what they wanted to buy, but Oh no, that is not the Tory bankster way!

So what did this policy achieved for Britain?

a distastrous shortage of affordable, decent housing and no political will to replace that which was sold off cheap for party political ends.

the huge loss of Council housing, paid for out of public funds, was financed by the invention of mortgage debt.

a new private debt mountain to rival the size of the public debt mountain, both standing at about £1.6 trillion currently.

artificially low interest rates, for years to come, designed to stop the banking sector from collapsing and actually paying for the disaster they caused.

a private housing rental sector where rents are artificially too high because of the lack of Council housing caused by the Right to buy policy.

Our debt fueled banking crisis, caused mainly by mortgage debt was created by unregulated, greedy bankers here and in the USA. Bankers lent non-existent cash to people who could not really afford to borrow. A banker led credit boom that fueled the fake economic growth so loved by Thatcher, Blair and Brown.

In February 2015, Home Secretary Theresa May said ‘ …authorities need to look at the ideology which drives young people to travel abroad and join extremist groups.’

This was in the light of her studied shocked reaction to the fact that three intelligent, apparently well educated, schoolgirls were off to Syria to join Isis as jihadi wives.

‘How was school, dear?’

Ms May said it was important to look not just at terrorism but ‘extremism across the whole spectrum’.

Did she define which “authorities” should undertake the task? No.

Did she define extremism? No.

Did she define the timescale? No.

Did she define the parameters for such an investigation? No.

So there we are; the usual display of meaningless poppycock presented as “policy” from a government minister.

Here is the answer for Ms May, and all those who still cannot understand the reason for the girls’ travel plans.

This, first suggested some 1,600 years ago by Hypatia of Alexandria (an enlightened teacher of mathematics and philosophy), a few years before she was burned to death by peace loving Christians.

“Fables should be taught as fables, myths as myths, and miracles as poetic fancies. To teach superstitions as truths is a most terrible thing. The child mind accepts and believes them, and only through great pain and perhaps tragedy can he be in after years relieved of them. In fact, men will fight for a superstition quite as quickly as for a living truth — often more so, since a superstition is so intangible you cannot get at it to refute it, but truth is a point of view, and so is changeable.”

“Life is an unfoldment, and the further we travel the more truth we can comprehend. To understand the things that are at our door is the best preparation for understanding those that lie beyond.”

“All formal dogmatic religions are fallacious and must never be accepted by self-respecting persons as final.”

“Reserve your right to think, for even to think wrongly is better than not to think at all.”

Why read all those other books when this one has all the answers?

In other words, as long as government treats religious faith as a valid subject for educating young minds, the problem will persist.

This wilfull blindness is dangerous for the nation’s children and for our future peace, but it doesn’t upset too many voters – yet.

Can you begin to see faith schools are dangerous and outdated?

Can you see that the treatment of religion as serious subject for young minds is deeply flawed? Once the seeds of ‘faith being a good thing’ are sewn in a young mind, all else follows. Then it is so much easier to present god as an irrefutable fact from which all else follows.

Faith seems to be revered as a worthy mental state when it should be seen for what it is, simply a vain hope based on myth or perhaps a comfort blanket for some.

That ring will really hurt, so you’d better be nice or I’ll whoop yo ass

As the old joke goes “Is the Pope a Catholic?” in other words, the answer to the question just asked is Yes, obviously!

Catholic he may be, but Christian? No.

The new PR man at the Vatican, Pope Francis, has made the most ridiculous statement supporting a violent response to those who poke fun at religion.

He would “punch” anyone who mocks the irrational belief in the invisible, whatever variety of religious silliness is being mocked.

This is in direct opposition to the teachings of Jesus, his supposed boss (for heaven’s sake ;-0 ) who would,of course, have turned the other cheek.

Pope Francis was talking about the Charlie Hebdo attacks and said that he quite understood the action taken. Unbelievable! (Later, the Vatican tried to soft pedal the idiotic statement, but to no avail.)

The latest Pope has shown us how far from Jesus’ teaching the Roman Catholic church has strayed.

What a silly billy, but thanks for showing yourself up and making the case for atheism and secularism for us!

Paris January 7th was a wake up call to all politicians in the west, and to the vast majority of people who do and say nothing about the slow rise of radical Islam in Europe and Great Britain. Appeasement to the religious vote is no longer acceptable. Radical Islam is being silently and ignorantly supported by moderate Muslims, and by our government’s inaction.

I am Charlie – the message of support and solidarity being repeated all over the world.

Dave, by all means step up security, but please finally recognise the long term issue that really need to be solved, viz.

ALL religion must be removed from ALL schools.Why? We have seen that many of the atrocities, committed in the name of Islam, have been perpetrated by engineers, doctors and mathematicians educated in the west. How did they become so warped? Religious faith was instilled into young, unformed minds used later by political Islam.

So, the removal of all region from all schools is the only long term solution. Otherwise Islam will triumph on its inevitable slow, but demographically fuelled growth. That is a small price to pay for removing religious funding for Anglicanism, Catholicism etc.

First generation British Muslims came to Britain for safety, jobs and stability. Many of their children have forgotten that, and their parents and grand parents need to stand up for the very British values that are being challenged by their children.

Supreme Court of Wisconsin(Weiss v. District Board, March 18, 1890. )

“There is no such source and cause of strife, quarrel, fights, malignant opposition, persecution, and war, and all evil in the state, as religion. Let it once enter into our civil affairs, our government soon would be destroyed. Let it once enter our common schools, they would be destroyed. Those who made our Constitution saw this, and used the most apt and comprehensive language in it to prevent such a catastrophe.”

My long awaited book, “The Normal Curve” has a new name “Bah, Poo & Piffle”. It sums up, in an entirely legal way, my feelings and views on politics, politicians, journalists and the whole 24/7 piffle factory which forms most of the news verbiage today. The book argues that party politics is outdated and explains exactly why politicians are rubbish at decision making. It also makes a few suggestions as to what we should do about the whole system of government from which we currently suffer.

Recently discovered in Westminster

I needed to get the title out in the world before Boris hijacks it, hence the advance notice, the world (and Boris) has been warned!

Sadly, I missed my targeted November 2014 publishing date and therefore the January 2015 Political Book Awards. The insatiable market for political reading fodder leading up to the May 2015 election will just have to make do with the first 3 chapters. I missed my target due to my grade 8 flute exam taking priority over a book that will change the world (ahem). Next May, I am hoping for a minority government as this will be best for the people. Why? Policies will be decided more slowly and one by one as different minorities hold the balance of votes.

Chapters 1, 2 & 3 will start appearing on my blog soon. Don’t worry about missing them, I will let you know when they start appearing. The other 14 chapters are almost there but will take another month or two.

The rest will be e published by some lucky publisher, as yet unnamed (because they all keep saying things like “Go away, who on earth are you?” or “Thank you but your excellent work does not fit our current profile.”) I now know how the Beatles felt when Decca turned them down 😉

Anyway, I wish you all a very Happy New Year of Moaning and groaning at the antics of the political classes.

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Thought for the day

George Bernard Shaw, early 20th century playwright “
The fact that a believer is happier than a skeptic is no more to the point than the fact that a drunken man is happier than a sober one. The happiness of credulity is a cheap and dangerous quality.”